The subjects selected for illustration are almost always typical examples, though there are many instances in which the fresh- ness and originality of the treatment and design are apparent. Each volume is adorned with thirteen highly-finished steel plates and nearly two hundred woodcuts. Of the five volumes entitled Picturesquo Europe, two are assigned to the British Isles and three to the Continent. The general features of the work may now be rapidly sketched, before we proceed to cite a few examples of the manner in which the details have been carried. Churches, monasteries and towers, balconies, gateways, and carved house-fronts,-every kind of constituent, natural or artificial, of the picturesque, may be dis- covered amongst the hundreds of illustrations which adorn each of the volumes before us. Here he may choose amongst mountains, waterfalls, lakes, rivers, or seas, forests or desert plains, gardens and palaces, or market-places and the quiet corners of old-world towns. For each reader of the work, or any one fortunate enough to own even a single part, cannot fail to find some chapters to his taste. If we are taken by the editor rather abruptly from the mountain snows of Switzerland to the sunny waters of the Bosphorus, if on descending the High Alps we find ourselves almost at once in Spain, and if directly we leave Corinth we land at Amsterdam, there is a good deal to be said in justification of tho erratic course of our guide. For the subjects and countries selected for illustration in each part of the work have a kind of representative character. London Cassell, Potter, & Gilpin, 1878 to 1878.Ĭompleteness of its own. A single volume, indeed, of the set constitutes a charming and valuable gift, possessing, as each of these volumes does possess, a sort of Cassell have collected a rich and varied series of pen-and-pencil illustrations of the picturesque scenery and buildings of Europe, the more are we impressed with the high quality of the literary as well as of the artistic contents of the whole work.
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